Heroes Assemble!

Like The Beatles?

Toomes gave him a nonplussed look.

"Don't be stupid," he said. "The Avengers might not be around any more, but the police still are. All this stuff," and here he picked up a glowing purple piece of tech, "it's alien, Chitauri mostly, and you know that it's illegal to have it."

"And it ain't exactly legal what we've done with it either, is it?" Mason grinned.

"You know it," Toomes replied. "Now, get this area cleaned up! I'm expecting that we'll be doing some more business in the next few months and we have to look and act all respectable-like. We ain't just demolition and construction workers no more."

Toomes looked around, his hands on his hips, pleased as the half dozen guys in his unit instantly obeyed, scurrying across the old warehouse to follow his orders.

No, he mused, they weren't what they once had been. They'd come a long way from that. Not since the Chitauri invasion had they been simple demolition and construction workers.

They'd been called in after the battle as one of the dozens of crews needed to clean up after the battle, to work out which buildings were safe and to demolish the ones that weren't. Part of that task, one that they'd taken for themselves, was to also clean up after the aliens – they'd been tech strewn all over the place: chariots, blasters, the great levitations themselves even.

And then they'd been shut down. Some government agency calling itself the 'Department of Damage Control', had come in and turfed them off of their job, claiming that everything alien now belonged to them. Neither Toomes nor any of his crew had been happy about that, especially after all the cash that they'd outlaid to ensure that they had the job in the first place.

But government was government and they couldn't fight it. They also didn't feel the need to declare the truckload of alien tech that they'd already gathered and simply driven off with.

Mason's ingenuity had been a godsend after that. His tinkering had got some of that tech working again, enough for them to be able to use, especially after it'd been married to some regular old Earth tech. And thus, had been born their new job – making and selling advanced weapons.

Of course, nothing, at least in Toomes' opinion, beat out the flying suit that Mason had created. It was pure joy to fly in that thing, to swoop down, wings outstretched, on unsuspecting targets and to relieve them of whatever Toomes wanted.

His eyes swept back up to the TV screen where some reporter was giving her analysis of what the Avengers 'retirement' meant.

"Good business," Toomes told her. "It means good business. We're going to be raking in the dough."

ooo00ooo

Francine Frye couldn't help but laugh with glee as she skipped down the New York street. She had just had the best day ever and nothing, not even the rain pelting down on her, nor the ominous thundercracks and flashes of lightning lighting up the sky could dampen her spirits. Not today! The Avengers were no more! Those pesky suited fools wouldn't be running around the city and picking on innocent guys just doing what they needed to do to get by any more.

Grabbing a pole, Francine swung around it, her arm outstretched. Nothing could take away how happy she was right then. Eyes wide, she swung about, looking, searching, hoping to see some bad boys.

Ever since she'd been little, Francine had been entranced by the 'bad boys', the ones who really knew how to have fun, those who did what they wanted, when they wanted it and didn't let anyone or anything get in their way. That was how Francine desperately wanted to be, not like the cloistered girl that her mother had always insisted that she be, always dressed conservatively, never going out after dark, not even being allowed to date unless the boy was considered decent and of good manners and breeding and even then, she'd had to wait until she was seventeen!